On the Geometry of the Conformal Group in Spacetime

Abstract

The study of the conformal group in $R^{p,q}$ usually involves the conformal compactification of $R^{p,q}$. This allows the transformations to be represented by linear transformations in $R^{p+1,q+1}$. So, for example, the conformal group of Minkowski space, $R^{1,3}$ leads to its isomorphism with $SO(2,4)$. This embedding into a higher dimensional space comes at the expense of the geometric properties of the transformations. This is particularly a problem in $R^{1,3}$ where we might well prefer to keep the geometric nature of the various types of transformations in sight. In this note, we show that this linearization procedure can be achieved with no loss of geometric insight, if, instead of using this compactification, we let the conformal transformations act on two copies of the associated Clifford algebra. Although we are mostly concerned with the conformal group of Minkowski space (where the geometry is clearest), generalization to the general case is straightforward.